Carolyn Wells famous quotes

Happiness is the ability to recognize it.
-- Carolyn Wells

#Happiness #Ability

I love the Christmas-tide, and yet, I notice this, each year I live; I always like the gifts I get, But how I love the gifts I give!
-- Carolyn Wells

#Christmas #Years #Giving

Actions lie louder than words.
-- Carolyn Wells

#Life #Lying #Action

Of two evils choose the prettier.
-- Carolyn Wells

#Two #Evil #Decision

Advice is one of those things it is far more blessed to give than to receive.
-- Carolyn Wells

#Blessed #Giving #Advice

'Tis blessed to bestow, and yet, Could we bestow the gifts we get, And keep the ones we give away, How happy were our Christmas day!
-- Carolyn Wells

#Christmas #Blessed #Giving

A blunder at the right moment is better than cleverness at the wrong time.
-- Carolyn Wells

#Mistake #Moments #Blunders

Advice ... is a habit-forming drug. You give a dear friend a bit of advice today, and next week you find yourself advising two or three friends, and the week after, a dozen, and the week following, crowds!
-- Carolyn Wells

#Two #Giving #Advice

I am more fond of achieving than striving. My theories must prove to be facts or be discarded as worthless. My efforts must soon be crowned with success, or discontinued.
-- Carolyn Wells

#Effort #Facts #Strive

What is a magazine? A small body of Literature entirely surrounded by advertisements.
-- Carolyn Wells

#Magazines #Literature #Body

Where there's a will there's a detective story.
-- Carolyn Wells

#Stories #Detectives

I have always hated biography, and more especially, autobiography. If biography, the writer invariably finds it necessary to plaster the subject with praises, flattery and adulation and to invest him with all the Christian graces. If autobiography, the same plan is followed, but the writer apologizes for it.
-- Carolyn Wells

#Christian #Grace #Biographies

I'm just the same age I've always been.
-- Carolyn Wells

#Age

Wall Street. - The abode of the Brokers and the Broke.
-- Carolyn Wells

#Wall #Broke #Abode

I think, for the rest of my life, I shall refrain from looking up things. It is the most ravenous time-snatcher I know. You pull one book from the shelf, which carries a hint or a reference that sends you posthaste to another book, and that to successive others. It is incredible, the number of books you hopefully open and disappointedly close, only to take down another with the same result.
-- Carolyn Wells

#Book #Thinking #Numbers

There are many ways of discarding [books]. You can give them to friends,--or enemies,--or to associations or to poor Southern libraries. But the surest way is to lend them. Then they never come back to bother you.
-- Carolyn Wells

#Friendship #Book #Giving

I view askance a book that remains undisturbed for a year. Oughtn't it to have a ticket of leave? I think I may safely say no bookin my library remains unopened a year at a time, except my own works and Tennyson's.
-- Carolyn Wells

#Reading #Book #Thinking

... the subjective viewpoint is the only one to use regarding a library. Your true library is a collection of the books you want.You may have deplorably poor taste or bad judgment. Never mind. Correct those traits before you exchange your books.
-- Carolyn Wells

#Book #Reading #Mind

I don't care very much for literary shrines and hauntsI knew a woman in London who boasted that she had lodgings from the windows of which she could throw a stone into Carlyle's yard. And when I said, "Why throw a stone into Carlyle's yard?" she looked at me as if I were an imbecile and changed the subject.
-- Carolyn Wells

#Travel #Shrines #Stones

... as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, the ideal library is in the wish of its maker.
-- Carolyn Wells

#Eye #Wish #Library

To take pride in a library kills it. Then, its motive power shifts over to the critical if admiring visitor, and apologies are necessary and acceptable and the fat is in the fire.
-- Carolyn Wells

#Apology #Pride #Fire

I hate to do what everybody else is doing. Why, only last week, on Fifth Avenue and some cross streets, I noticed that every feminine citizen of these United States wore an artificial posy on her coat or gown. I came home and ripped off every one of the really lovely refrigerator blossoms that were sewn on my own bodices.
-- Carolyn Wells

#Fashion #Hate #Home

All through the nineties I met people. Crowds of people. Met and met and met, until it seemed that people were born and hastily grew up, just to be met.
-- Carolyn Wells

#People #Crowds #Grew Up

... ideals, standards, aspirations,--those are chameleon words, and take color from their speakers,--often false tints. A scholarly man of my acquaintance once told me that he traveled a thousand miles into the desert to get away from the word uplift, and it was the first word he heard after he reached his destination.
-- Carolyn Wells

#Uplifting #Men #Color

how could advice be successful? If it turns out right, the adviser is ignored and the advisee takes all the credit. If it proves mistaken, the adviser receives all the blame.
-- Carolyn Wells

#Successful #Advice #Credit

Insistent advice may develop into interference, and interference, someone has said, is the hind hoof of the devil.
-- Carolyn Wells

#Advice #Devil #May

Every dogma must have its day.
-- Carolyn Wells

#Dogma

A cynic is a man who looks at the world with a monocle in his mind's eye.
-- Carolyn Wells

#Eye #Men #Mind

To make a library It takes two volumes And a fire. Two volumes and a fire, And interest. The interest alone will do If logs are few.
-- Carolyn Wells

#Fire #Two #Library

A critic is a necessary evil, and criticism is an evil necessity.
-- Carolyn Wells

#Evil #Criticism #Necessary Evil

It is the interest one takes in books that makes a library. And if a library have interest it is; if not, it isn't.
-- Carolyn Wells

#Book #Library #Interest

Take care of your common sense, and your dignity will take care of itsself
-- Carolyn Wells

#Common Sense #Care #Dignity

A fool and his money are soon married.
-- Carolyn Wells

#Money #Fool #Married

The books we think we ought to read are poky, dull, and dry The books that we would like to read we are ashamed to buy The books that people talk about we never can recall And the books that people give us, oh, they're the worst of all.
-- Carolyn Wells

#Book #Writing #Thinking

You wouldn't believe On All Hallow Eve What lots of fun we can make, With apples to bob, And nuts on the hob, And a ring-and-thimble cake.
-- Carolyn Wells

#Fun #Halloween #Believe

The way to do some things is to do them.
-- Carolyn Wells

#Way #Action

Almost before the big motor-car stopped, the girl sprang out.
-- Carolyn Wells

#Girl #Book #Car

We should live and learn; but by the time we've learned, it's too late to live.
-- Carolyn Wells

#Knowledge #Too Late #Live And Learn

I don't believe the half I hear, Nor the quarter of what I see! But I have one faith, sublime and true, That nothing can shake or slay; Each spring I firmly believe anew All the seed catalogues say!
-- Carolyn Wells

#Spring #Believe #Sublime

Youth is a silly, vapid state, Old age with fears and ills is rife, This simple boon I beg of Fate - A thousand years of Middle Life.
-- Carolyn Wells

#Silly #Fate #Simple

A guilty conscience is the mother of invention.
-- Carolyn Wells

#Mother #Guilty Conscience #Invention

Nonsense makes the heart grow fonder.
-- Carolyn Wells

#Heart #Nonsense #Grows

When I feel that I'm going to write a detective story, I buy a five pound box of chocolates and a ream of paper. When the candy is all gone and the paper all used up, I know that the book is long enough.
-- Carolyn Wells

#Book #Writing #Long

Reward is its own virtue.
-- Carolyn Wells

#Rewards #Virtue

A profit is not without honor save in Boston.
-- Carolyn Wells

#Boston #Honor #Profit

Contentment is the result of a limited imagination.
-- Carolyn Wells

#Imagination #Contentment #Results

Society's the mother of convention.
-- Carolyn Wells

#Mother #Society #Conventions

In December people give no thought to the Past or the Future. They thing only of the Present.
-- Carolyn Wells

#Past #People #Giving

Circumstances alter faces.
-- Carolyn Wells

#Faces #Circumstances

Invitation is the sincerest flattery.
-- Carolyn Wells

#Flattery #Invitations

Flirtation envies Love, and Love envies Flirtation.
-- Carolyn Wells

#Flirting #Envy #And Love

musicians rarely have a sense of humour, at least, about themselves.
-- Carolyn Wells

#Humor #Musician #Humour

The wages of sin is alimony.
-- Carolyn Wells

#Infidelity #Wages #Sin

A living gale is better than a dead calm.
-- Carolyn Wells

#Gale #Calm

At times there is nothing so unnatural as nature.
-- Carolyn Wells

#Nature

Patriotism covers a multitude of sins.
-- Carolyn Wells

#Patriotism #Sin #Multitudes

One of the first principles of perseverance is to know when to stop persevering.
-- Carolyn Wells

#Perseverance #Principles #Firsts